Gender Theory in Troubled Times. Rachel Alsop
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We reject a naturalizing account which regards biology as determining a binary division into sexed kinds and a consequent set of social divisions. Nonetheless the biological body is part of the story here, and we follow new materialist feminists in assigning importance to it.
We then turn our attention in chapter 2 to the psyche, specifically the development of sets of sexed psychological identifications, as a consequence of what is made of bodily difference and the significance attached to it, in both intimate familial and more public, cultural settings. The theorists we look at here are the founding fathers of psychoanalysis, Freud and Lacan, and some of the feminist sexual difference theorists who interrogate, challenge and make use of their work. Using critical race theorists, we also compare how this work is made use of in theorizing sexed difference and in theorizing raced difference. We highlight the important concept of the imaginary, which has its origin in this psychoanalytic work. Again, we resist an account which sees a necessary binary sexual division within individual psychic development and public symbolic structures. But the theories we consider provide crucial resources for making sense of the processes of developing a gendered sense of self – a sense of self which results from what is made of bodily difference privately and, interconnectedly, within the public imaginary.
The third chapter turns from the domain of the biological and the psyche to the domain of economic and social structures. Drawing on Marx’s historical materialism, Marxist feminists and socialist feminists interrogating the interweaving of capitalism and patriarchy, we show how gendered positionality structures the possibilities for, and outcomes of, engagement in the social world. These points are illustrated by data concerning the differential position of men and women in contemporary societies. What happens to us, as women and men, is conditioned by the material and economic structures of the historical and geographical locations in which we are placed. These are very variable. But gender affects the ways each of them is organized. Part of what it is to be gendered is to be positioned in particular ways in these economic and social structures, as well as in the linguistic structures and social imaginaries discussed in the previous chapter. There is no universal account of these structures. Patriarchal consequences are achieved in multiple ways, even when we confine ourselves to exploring the interweaving of class and gender. But we also note, drawing from black feminist thought and theorists of disability, that the workings of these structures cannot be articulated by restricting ourselves to class and gender. Moreover, post-colonial and decolonial feminists have long stressed the ways in which capitalism and patriarchy require the history of colonial exploitation and its contemporary legacy. We return to this discussion in chapter 5.
In chapter 4 we turn to the ground-breaking work of Simone de Beauvoir. In her 1949 text The Second Sex, Beauvoir weaves together the different strands of theory we have so far introduced. We foreground her work both for the key theoretical resources she provides, particularly from phenomenology, and for the exemplary way in which she makes clear how multiple factors are entangled in the account we offer of becoming gendered. She recognizes that we are assigned sexed positionality most commonly on the basis of biological features. But the consequences of such assignment depend on the (variable) meaning and significance attached to these categories, including what Beauvoir calls the social myths, what we would call the imaginaries, attached to men and women. It also depends heavily on the economic and legal structures within which we are placed. But Beauvoir adds another element to the discussion of becoming woman. She links the above factors, what she terms the objective conditions, to an account of gendered subjectivity, by attending to the lived experiences of women (and occasionally men) at different stages of their lives. These experiences are a consequence not only of being positioned within certain external structures but also of a process of internalizing the meaning and norms attached to this sexed positionality. Moreover, such internalization also contributes to the maintenance and reproduction of the objective inequalities.
In chapter 5 we turn our attention to what is regarded as one of the key cornerstones of contemporary gender theory, namely the discussion of intersectionality. As signalled at the end of chapter 3, the work of second-wave and earlier black feminist theorists identified that the consequences of our gendered positionality varied according to our raced, cultural, national and other social positionalities. Other writers also made evident differences concerning sexuality and bodily abilities. We therefore need to consider how these different categories relate to each other. The discussion here looks at the intersection in terms of the objective structuring of the social world but also, following the lead of Beauvoir, in relation to the lived subjectivity of individuals within that world and the kind of intersectional identifications which constitute our sense of self. This discussion of intersectionality is also informed by the contributions of decolonial writers interrogating the application of Western gendered terms within the colonial encounter. The outcome of these discussions is a rejection of any universal accounts of the contents of gendered categories.
Next, in chapter 6, we turn to the work of Judith Butler. The publication of Butler’s Gender Trouble in 1990 and the articulation of her performative theory of gender changed the face of gender theory. It offered the most radical challenge thus far to gender essentialism in any form. Butler gave an account of the production of individual gendered identities, the social meanings of gender, and differing material outcomes in terms of performative acts. These acts were in accordance with socially given, gendered scripts, whose meanings the acts both reflected and helped constitute. Butler importantly recognized the interweaving of norms of gender and norms of sexuality, so that the gender binary itself was a requirement of a heterosexual model of sexuality and the family. But the meanings of our gendered categories and categories of sexuality, she stressed, are intersectional, unstable and shifting. Crucially, the meanings and the existence of the gender and sexual binaries themselves can be destabilized in unpredictable ways by the workings of performativity itself. We attempt to take on board the key insights of Butler’s account while also stressing the constraints of our bodies and of economic and social structures, which were given scant attention in her earlier work. In addition, central to our account here is the attention she gives, in later work, to our vulnerability to others, and to social practices, in making sense of ourselves. She stresses the need each of us has for recognition by others if we are to make sense of ourselves, and if we are to be able to live a life alongside them.
The key role of our gendered categories in making sense of ourselves, and negotiating a public space in which we can live alongside others, is the focus of our final chapter. Here our primary resources are trans theorists who engage with the lives of those who are in different ways gender non-conformist, some of whom may change their original gendered assignment. The variety of meaning and contextual specificity attached to our gendered terms, particularly as they intersect with categories of sexuality, is marked here. It reinforces our central claim that there are no sets of necessary and sufficient conditions determining what is required to be a woman or man. But there is something else which becomes clear here and which is central to our approach. There is nothing arbitrary or whimsical about the categories in terms of which we make sense of ourselves or others. Moreover, the appropriateness of any categorization is not simply a matter of subjective feelings (though these are important). Our gendered terms are public categories whose shifting usage has to make sense to a community of users as tools to negotiate liveable patterns of intersubjective relations, in both intimate and public spheres.
We hope the approach to gender articulated in this book will widen the communities in which shifting conceptions of gender, and the increasing fluidity of the boundaries, can find recognition.
Notes
1 See, for example, posts at www.facebook.com/womansplaceuk/ and www.facebook.com/DRradfem/.